I'm feeling better than I was there. Just holding on until after the vacation and then things should calm down. (And I'll make them.)

We bought a mattress for the spare bedroom, which was the last thing we needed to make our house functional. Plan now is to not buy anything for the house until we've got the furniture (GEMoney acct) and my parents paid off and have saved for whatever is next on our prioritized list.

Isn't it funny that one sails along for years with decent but unconscious money habits, but once you formally declare that you are going to do better, spending money-wise, that's when the floodgates open?

I started my own journal this year and I feel like I've been spending money left and right.

New house, new job does take some adjustment. But the beauty of recording your spending habits, you can notice patterns and change things if need be.

Myself, noticed every month something comes up to spend money on. I'm not going to completely shut myself down, but from now on my rule will be to try to keep to keep my miscellaneous spending expenses around 1K. If I go past that, the spending will have to be deferred to next month. For example I would like some summer clothes (mine are ratty). But my husband really needs new shoes.

Isn't it funny that one sails along for years with decent but unconscious money habits, but once you formally declare that you are going to do better, spending money-wise, that's when the floodgates open?

Exactly! I wrote another post about how I was feeling better/less cranky about things now, but it got swallowed somehow.

We made our last purchase in order to make the house functional (mattress for the guest bed). Plan now is to not purchase anything other than the food/gas/etc we need to function until all the house stuff is fully paid off and we've saved for whatever is next on our prioritized list. (Of course, we have to make that prioritized list first.)

So I'm going to go on my vacation, have a fabulous time, and then come back and make things calm down. Get the temporarly debt paid off, get the savings back on track, and breathe.

One of the general themes in my financial life is that I'm very responsible about the big things (mortgage, IRA, 401K, etc) , but pretty foolish about the small things.

So I'm proud to say that I've finally taken care of something that's stupidly been on my money to-do list for about 3 years. I'm entitled to a 20% discount on my cell phone plan due to my employer. That's been true for 10 years. I found out three years ago. Yesterday I finally got it in place on my account. Woohoo.

Another baby step today - I opened an ING checking account. Plan is to add my BF as a joint account holder, transfer the amount of our food budget into it each paycheck, and then spend our groceries/eating out from that account.

Getting our groceries/eating out money under control would be a HUGE improvement in our finances.

Not particularly worried about anything I bought (mostly work clothes) and no regrets, just cautioning myself so I don't continue unchecked. The whole work wardrobe is still an issue for me. I don't feel like I have a complete wardrobe yet, but hate spending the money to get there - especially when I'm still working/hoping to lose weight.

And now if I look at my NI trend over time it shows:January $3,554.60 February $274.80 March $2,887.72 April -$1,398.39 May -$717.21 June -$130.18 July $2,845.60 August $2,801.32 September $4,431.96 October -$72.67

Maybe I'm reporting my number too early most months? The February swing is weird, but I'm reasonably sure that I may have reclassified some expense that would make it show up differently, at least that's what I'm hoping.

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